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Am currently attending a talk on the DMCA 1201 rulemaking. I’ve become just too cynical a bastard to really attend these things; the first speaker here is a shill for the content industry (albeit a very bright shill), and I’m having a hard time not laughing out loud at some of his claims. (He’s riffing off the New York Times article I blogged about the other day, claiming that it justifies DRM, despite the entire thrust of the article being about how bad DRM is for users.) So… argh, I had intended to liveblog it, but it just pisses me off too much. Hopefully the other speaker (Jonathan Band, who it sounds like is a skeptic) won’t piss me off quite so much.

[Later: Band’s focus was on how DMCA creates antitrust-like problems, specifically tying, and how DMCA interferes with legitimate uses (similar to my rant about why DRM and fair use are fundamentally incompatible.) In discussing tying, he focused on Lexmark and similar cases, staying away from the iPod-market protection discussion. In discussing legitimate use, he focused on the 1201 exemption process for the academic fair use of films (which Bill McGeveran discusses here.) Apparently the MPAA actually had the gall to suggest that film professors should use a video camera to tape DVDs off a big screen. Nothing new for me, though parts of it were probably new to most of the audience.]

[Later, again: one thing that was new to me came out during the last question. Both professors agreed that the procedures established during the 2006 rulemaking will allow for more targeted exceptions, which they think over time will mean more exceptions, despite the opposition of the RIAA/MPAA.]